Mercy West
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: AU. For private investigator April Kepner and her cop best friend Jackson Avery, crimes of aggression are easy enough to solve. Crimes of passion, however – say, the kind of passion that happens one night when there's blood and rainwater on the floor – are a bit more tricky.
1. Preface

**Preface**

Hi, I'm – no.

I'm a kickass –no.

Did somebody call for a – _no_.

My name is April Kepner, and I used to be a police officer. People leave jobs for different reasons, especially jobs like that, but Charles Percy and Reed Adamson didn't have a choice. A man with a gun took their choice away while they were still rookies, and I took it…badly. I _couldn't_ take it. Jackson was different. Jackson is my best friend: we graduated in the same class, we drink beer together ( sometimes cocoa), and occasionally we bake together (meaning I bake, he eats). Jackson took it, Charles and Reed, and he stuck with it, and now he shares a patch with Alex Karev, also from our class. They even have rookies of their own now, although rumour has it Alex offered Jackson a hundred dollars for a trade: Stephanie Edwards for Jo Wilson, who broke Officer Myers' nose when he called her trailer trash. Alex calls her Hobo Jo, but the two of them get along just fine – maybe better than fine.

I'm a private investigator now, working out of the fourth floor of a ten storey office block in Seattle. On the seventh floor is Grey, Shepherd and Yang, the firm set up by legal eagle Ellis Grey. Derek Shepherd had been made senior partner by the time she passed away, and the first thing he did was to hire Meredith Grey, Ellis' daughter, and high flier Cristina Yang, straight out of law school. Cristina is crabby, antisocial and brilliant, and Meredith is crabby, antisocial, brilliant and in love with Derek, who is charming and brilliant (I might have had a teeny-tiny crush, but even Derek Shepherd's clients have a teeny-tiny crush on Derek Shepherd, so it's okay). We all sometimes run into one another at the bar across the street.

That bar is run by a woman you don't want to get on the wrong side of. Her nickname is 'the bone breaker', but I have no idea why, since Callie's more likely to break bread with you than break your face. She has a smart mouth and a sympathetic ear, but I'm better friends with her wife, Arizona. Arizona, a paediatrician, works longer hours than her practice allows, does more for her patients than their insurance allows and is somehow always home on time to kiss baby Sofia goodnight. Sofia's father is Jackson's boss, Captain Mark Sloan (in a city this big, you'd think there'd be more degrees of separation). He's dating Meredith's sister Lexie, who used to date Jackson, who's convinced I prowl the streets looking for trouble every night I don't spend watching TV with him, trying to get his icky boy feet off my end of the couch.

In summary:

Jackson is my best friend.

Jesus reigns in my heart.

There's pasta salad in the fridge.


	2. Pick Yourself Up

**1. Pick Yourself Up**

I wake up with my face pressed deep into the couch cushion and yes, it is wet, so yes, I did drool on the beautiful new cushion on my beautiful new couch. The leather is super soft, cream-coloured and totally impractical. The cushions are mint green with birds and flowers stencilled on them. I love my new couch, but I fully intended to make it to bed last night. Looking around me, I realise why I didn't: a manila file is still clenched in my left hand, and the coffee table is strewn with papers and popcorn. I'm guessing I tried to eat, watch a movie and work at the same time.

Solving cases is easy. Wrapping them up is deadly difficult.

"Should've been a doctor," I tell myself, blinking sleep out of my eyes as I move the necessary ninety degrees to a sitting position. My head swirls for a moment or two, and then I'm up and on my way to the kitchen. "Yep, should've been a doctor," I repeat as I rattle the cereal box. Only three whole-wheat squares tumble out into the bowl, and I glare at them. Thank God the coffee machine is on a timer, so I never have to worry about remembering to worry about that.

I'm neurotic, and most of the time, I'm okay with being neurotic. I own my neuroticism. When I'm working a case, I work like a demon, and I clean like a demon, and I cook enough one pot wonders to fill my freezer and the freezers of all my friends. When I've closed a case, I eat enough junk food to make up for all the evenings I spent hunched over my computer instead of eating a hot meal at my kitchen table or lazing in a hot bath, and I sleep like the dead to make up for all the sleepless nights I spent tailing cars or writing my report, and I forget to buy groceries.

I imagine if I were a doctor, even if I didn't have time to visit the grocery store, I would have enough money to pay someone to go for me.

It's a little after seven, and the world outside my window is as quiet and calm as it ever is on a street in Seattle. I drink my coffee and watch the sun struggle up through the grey clouds which always hang over the city, and then I go to bathroom and program my toothbrush for two minutes of strenuous – but not too strenuous, enamel wear is a serious problem – of brushing. It beeps each time it wants me to move on to a new section of my mouth, and I obey, staring at my reflection in the mirror, at the damage one night face-first in my beautiful new couch has done. Last night's mascara has begun to slide, although it did its duty bravely all day yesterday. My skin is pink, flushed and creased.

I'm not only neurotic, now my skin is creased too.

My hands are on autopilot, pulling my hair up into a ponytail when I pause. I purse my lips and try to remember the day: Tuesday. No, I won't wear my hair in a ponytail on a Tuesday, because Jackson is more likely to drop by on a Tuesday, and every time I wear my hair in a ponytail, his lips twitch. What's so wrong with ponytails? They keep your hair out of your eyes, they're hygienic, and just because he doesn't even have a half inch of hair to call his own doesn't mean he has any rights over mine. To be fair, the reason he doesn't have a half inch of hair is because his grows out curly, and that probably makes my lips twitch too, and I bet he notices mine like I notice his. Curly hair also doesn't help his pretty boy looks, which is why he carefully cultivates two days' worth of beard growth before calling time on his appearance. It's pointless, though, trying to add an edge of roughness to a whole load of handsome.

Sometimes, I think he may even be prettier than me.

Anyway, I see Jackson most days, but he usually drops by the office on a Tuesday, because that's the day Lexie never drops drop by to see her sister or her brother-in-law. I'm pretty sure Jackson still loves her, and who wouldn't? Lexie is stunning, and stunningly sweet, and her eyes are deep brown. When she and Jackson broke up, she went blonde for a week or two before Mark Sloan ran into her at the bar across the street, bawled her out from breaking his protégé, then told her to change her hair colour back and tried to take her home. She refused to do any of the above, beat him at darts and then went on to give CPR to another bar patron – with a little help from Mark, of course, who carried the woman out to the ambulance himself. When I asked, Lexie told me that was when she started to see him differently. We actually get on better now she's not seeing Jackson. Why is that?

"I'm used to my boyfriends having, you know –" She waggled her straw at me before sticking it back in her cup of ice coffee and slurping. "Friends who are boys. Talking about beer and boobs and whatever else guys talk about. If I said something flip to one of my boyfriend's boy friends, he'd never be able to work out what it meant so he could report back I'd said it. You – well. You're a girl. You'd know." Her hair was back to brown by then, falling in loose waves on either side of her face.

I envy Lexie. I don't envy her Jackson, not what she had, and I didn't begrudge her having him when they were together. What I envy is what she has now, the way Mark sits and waits at the bar in Callie's with one hundred percent certainty that she's going to show up, and yet somehow still looks like he'd wait all night if she didn't. Next to him sits Derek Shepherd, waiting for his own Grey sister. He gives a very small smile when he sees Meredith through the glass door, and I want that too.

Just, you know, not from Derek Shepherd.

Maybe from Derek Shepherd.

Except it would obviously have to be in a different universe, because Derek would never leave Meredith, and it would also have to be in a universe where he'd go for me, April Kepner, so…

All those years I spent getting ready to wear a uniform have left me with a funny attitude towards clothes: I don't know how to be casual. I dress for work in a pink blouse that took me a half hour to iron, since the cuffs wouldn't go right, and a grey pencil skirt, and then I reorder the hangers in the closet as if I'm trying to hide my disturbance of the clothing peace. I feel groggy, and my stomach is burning from too much caffeine and too little food. I'll see if Arizona is awake, because if she is, I'll get an invite to breakfast whether I want to be invited or not. This morning, though, I want to, and Callie takes my order of cinnamon toast over the phone and huffs since there isn't more for her to do.

She adds a side of bacon and a tub of yoghurt off her own back, and gives me a death stare from across the breakfast bar.

"What?!"

"What did you eat for dinner last night?"

I practically break out in a cold sweat. Calliope Torres, the Bone Breaker, has a figure that goes in and out in all the right places and a sixth sense about eating habits. I swallow, take a sip of orange juice and say, "Turkey casserole."

"You really want to lie to me, Kepner? In my own apartment?"

I cave. "Half of bag of butter popcorn," I mumble, then wince as Callie makes a sound like a bull about to charge.

As ever, it's Arizona to the rescue. "Good morning, Mommy!" She says brightly, on behalf of baby Sofia in her arms. She hands her off to Callie before her wife can do anything drastic, kisses her firmly on the lips and takes a moment to enjoy the melting smile she gets in return. Then, she turns to me, surprisingly and annoyingly alert for the time of day. "Good morning, April. Try the French set yoghurt, it's delicious."

I don't really want any French set yoghurt, but I dip my spoon obediently into the pot. Callie may be bad cop, but Arizona is big, baby blue eyed cop, and not doing as she says will result in hours of guilt for me rather than any bad consequences for her. She'll go to work and save babies whether I eat the French set yoghurt or not, but I want the rest of this week to be good, so I eat it.

When I finally escape the warm, wonderful atmosphere of the Robbins-Torres (Torres-Robbins?) apartment, the breeze feels colder than it was when I left earlier. I have to shrink inside my coat as I cross the street. Our building doesn't have a doorman, and the doors are plate glass and heavy. I can see Cristina sitting in the lobby, obnoxiously eating a bagel and watching me struggle. Her dark eyes snap when I finally make it inside. I smile at her automatically, and she says, "Does _anything_ ever piss you off, Kepner?"

"No," I reply, and then there's an awkward half-minute while I wait for the elevator to arrive and Cristina studies me as she chomps her bagel, like she's trying to work out if I'm real or not.

I'm just a happy person, when my cereal and in-tray aren't conspiring to ruin my day.

My office is more functional than I'd like – the joys of renting floor space – but at least I've been able to take down the framed prints of abstract squiggles, as seen on the wall of every value for money motel you'd ever visited. Three greyscale photographs of the city hang over a corner sofa and two easy chairs, and there are two end tables with stacks of my business card and little bowls of candies. They're peppermints, which I don't like, and I buy them because I don't like them. It's unprofessional for a private investigator to ait alone in her waiting room when she's not with a client, popping candies into her mouth like she's starving. I like spearmints, so I buy peppermints, and people appreciate me giving them something before they've even come all the way in.

I appreciate not having to have long conversations with clients with coffee breath, but it's mostly the giving them something thing.

Like practically every other business on the planet, I open at nine and close at five, but I turn off the answerphone as soon as I come in in the morning, which is usually sooner. When I had my hand wrapped around my second cup of coffee of the day and I'd checked my email, there really wasn't anything to do except stare at the phone and wait (or hope) for it to ring. I stared. I waited.

It rang, half an hour before my work day was due to begin.

Creepy.

"Good morning! You're through to the office of April Kepner, licensed private investigator."

"Are you her?"

"Am I her?"

"Mrs Kepner, I mean."

"Ms," I correct the guy on the other end of the line, who has a nice sounding voice. I have to give myself a mental shake before I speak again, since beginning a fantasy based on the sound of someone's voice is definitely stupid and definitely not allowed. "But please call me April. Are you in need of an investigator?"

"April," he says, and mental shake or not, it _is_ a nice voice. "My name is Matthew Taylor. I'm the minister at St. Michael, the church down on Fir Street?"

"I know it."

He pauses, then chuckles quietly. "I'm sorry, I don't know how this works. I don't know what to say."

"That's okay." I've already started noting down his details, and my fingers are hovering in the air above the keyboard, waiting for something relevant. "Were you calling to make an appointment?"

"I was actually wondering if you'd be able to come to me." Matthew Taylor sounds sheepish. "The committee ladies are having a coffee morning and arranging the flowers from nine until noon, and I hate to say it, but I don't like to leave them alone too long to dissect my sermons or my haircut or to hypothesise about why I haven't settled down yet." Another pause. "I'm sorry, I'm talking too much about things that must not interest you one bit."

I can't help but laugh, and I hope he doesn't think I'm mocking him. "I hear much worse, much more boring, and the life and times of a minister would interest anyone. It's that thing they say in the news…human interest." I peek at my calendar, blank white squares until the end of the month. "I have a few things to organise here first, but I can be with you by ten." _Sure, show off the fact that you have no other clients to see! Why don't you tell him how you plan to pay your rent out of your savings this month too?_ "I'm sorry, there's actually a few more things than I first thought. I can be with you by eleven, is that okay?"

"That's perfect," he says, and I want to laugh again just because he sounds so grateful, and I haven't even taken the case yet. "I look forward to meeting you, _Ms_ Kepner."

I absolutely did not imagine him stressing my single status.

I did not.

I am not that neurotic.

Because I'm neurotic, and because I absolutely didn't imagine him stressing my single status, I arrive at St. Michael at ten minutes to eleven. Saint Michael the Archangel is the patron saint of police officers, since he took it upon himself to hunt down Satan and his followers, which is pretty close to what I used to do and to what Jackson, Alex and their rookies do on a day-to-day basis. I have a good feeling about a case at a place where the saint is keeping an eye on the people I care about, but I still feel awkward about being here so early. I hunch down in my seat until only the top of my head can be seen, and I stare at the dashboard clock and will the numbers to change faster.

"Are you alright, miss?"

I scoot upright so fast that my head crashes into the roof (ow, ow, _ow_), and blush rose red at my own stupidity. I clear my throat and wind down the window. There's a tall guy with slightly too much brown hair and a plaid shirt smiling apologetically down at me. I spot the strip of white at his collar and register how cute he is almost simultaneously. He's just my type, too: clean-shaven, clean-cut, with the kind of shoulders that had to have been hidden under a letter jacket during high school, or some coach should kick himself for missing out on a championship winner if ever I saw one.

"April Kepner," I croak, and flush even darker. My face is probably the same colour as my hair, damn it.

"Matthew Taylor. It's a pleasure to meet you." He puts his hand just inside the car, and it's just big enough to wrap around mine without overwhelming it. His palm is cool and dry. Taking the initiative and being a gentleman in one action, he opens my car door. "Welcome to St. Michael, Ms…April. I'm the minister here."

Jesus, please support me having a crush on this guy, in thy name I pray, amen.

Matthew, as he asks me to call him a second after I use the word 'Pastor', lowers his voice as we sneak past the door which leads into the main body of the church. White-haired ladies, with loose turkey skin or plump turkey bodies, are chattering noisily, knocking back coffee and stripping the thorns off roses inside. It's kind of adorable that Matthew's phobia is old ladies, and his expression of relief when we make it safely to his office is at odds with my idea of a man who has something for me to investigate. I put a hand to my hair, remember guys don't like girls who are obsessed with their appearance, and let it fall again.

"So how I can help, Matthew?"

He gestures me into a seat before taking his own, and the way he sits down shows the weight of a burden. The light doesn't go out of his face completely, but it does dim by a few watts. "The previous minister was very old school," he begins. "Very pro obedience from his flock. When the church needed money for something, all he had to do was glare from the altar on a Sunday morning, and the collection plate would be overflowing. I'm not like that." I'm glad he isn't, but I don't dare tell him so. We've only just met, but sure enough, I'm worrying about how to get him to like me. I'm neurotic and most of the time I own my neuroticism, but sometimes, I really don't_._ "I decided to introduce an air of competition between our teenagers," Matthew goes on. "Whoever raises the most money gets a special certificate for services to the church, and gets to pick the movie for our next 'Prayer and Pizza' night."

"Yummy," I comment, and wish I hadn't. Matthew positively beams, and then I don't mind so much.

"Thank you. It's something I brought in, a way to get the younger members of the congregation to associate talking about God with having fun." He realises he's gone off-topic, sighs and resumes. "Our most recent project is to refit the room where we have mother and baby classes on Wednesdays, since we have so many new and expecting mothers in attendance. The kids go out, they raise the money, they put it in a lock box in the entryway. I thought if anything was going to happen, it would be someone trying to steal the lockbox, which is bolted down, by the way."

"But that's not it?"

"No. What's happening is that every time we reach a certain amount – specifically, five hundred dollars – all the money disappears. It goes like clockwork: the money goes in, the money builds up, the money disappears."

"Does anyone other than you have the key to the lock box?"

"It's key code protected," he informs me. "And since I set up the code, I'm pretty sure no one else could've figured it out."

"It's not a birthday, or a recognisable sequence of numbers?"

Matthew tilts his head to one side.

"Sorry."

"No need to be sorry. You're just being thorough."

We smile at one another, taking baby steps. I feel the heat rise up in my cheeks again, and to stop the situation getting any worse, I surmise, "So you want me to find out who's taking the money, and maybe, if only for human interest –" He chuckles again. "To find out why it's disappearing when it hits five hundred. I'm also guessing you want to deal with whoever it is personally, in which case I'll report my findings to you rather than the police. Is that everything?"

"It is."

I extract a pamphlet from my purse and slide it across the desk towards him. "In that case, these are my fees."

His teeth are perfect, and so is his answering smile. "So you'll take the case?"

"You're working for His glory," I reply. "And you got pizza involved. How can I say no to that?"

Matthew stands when I stand, but he stops me before I reach the door. "Would you like to pray with me, April?"

That says so much, much more than it might say to another girl. It says he believes that I believe as truly as he does. It says he's good to talk to God with me in the same room, with me talking to God at the same time. It says he trusts me, even though he didn't know whether I was Mrs or Ms or even that I believed in God when he picked up the phone to call me this morning.

"I'd like that."

And we kneel in the corner of his office, on green leather cushions left there for the purpose. There is nothing more soothing for me than speaking to Him, even if it's nothing more than telling Him about my day so far and my hopes for the rest of the day to come. I reel off prayers for everyone I love, and include one for Matthew, a tentative prayer that his prayers are answered too, and a more definite one that I have the strength and ability to solve this case for him.

I drive back to my building refreshed, renewed and maybe a little giggly (though that has more to do with Pastor Matthew than Our Lord Jesus), and even the fact that my lunch is, as ever, missing from the shared fridge down the hall from my office doesn't faze me.

**~#~**

I bounce into Callie's at nine thirty, not surprised to see Jackson waiting at the bar. He didn't come by to see me, so I might as well have gone ahead with the ponytail, but that hardly matters now. Jackson has the hood of his grey sweater up, and he looks like a hot – but very non-threatening – Jedi.

"What's with the hood?" I ask as I sit down beside him, and Callie slides something orange and noxious in a glass towards me before I can open my mouth to order.

"It's raining," he points out.

"Not inside."

Jackson rolls his eyes at me, since he has no idea why I'm making such a big deal of this, and neither do I. I'm floating on a cloud of pink happiness, and hood up or hood down, nothing's going to stop me from sharing it.

"I got a case today."

"Hey, that's great." He clinks his beer bottle – how did Jackson get a beer when I'm stuck with Death by Clementine? – against my glass and grins at me. "Are you done winding up with the Fawcetts?"

"Almost." Death by Clementine is actually pretty tasty, as I didn't doubt it would be. Callie smirks at me as I take a bigger sip. "What about you? Save any lives today? Right any wrongs? Rescue any damsels in distress?"

"You really don't miss it, do you?" His green eyes are intense. One of the things I love about Jackson is that when you really talk to him, meaning when you talk to him about anything that matters, he listens as if there's no one else in the world but you. He doesn't break eye contact, though he does interrupt.

"You don't get to do what I get to do," I retort. "For example, you have to remain professional at all times, whereas I can attempt to flirt with the cute minister who just hired me when he invites me into his office."

Jackson starts to whistle 'Like a Virgin' under his breath, and I smack him round the back of the head before he's even made it to the first verse.

"April!"

"Stop that!"

"Stop hitting my head!"

"I will when you stop that!"

He does stop when he senses I'm serious, and punches me lightly on the arm. This is what we do, and how we fight, and how we make up. It's just natural for us to antagonise each other. We always have. We always will.

"Cute minister, huh?"

"Cute minister Matthew," I report. "How about you? Asked Edwards out yet?"

He stares me down, but I hold my ground. It's mean of me, I guess, but Officer Stephanie Edwards is so clearly in love with Jackson that each one of the dozen different ways he tries to deny it is hilarious to me. She hangs on his every word, clings to him in a crisis and bats her lashes at him whenever Jo Wilson isn't around to tease her about it. "I am _not_ asking Edwards out," Jackson says slowly, enunciating each word. "_Ever_."

"She's pretty," I point out. "She's good at what she does."

"So are you."

So we're back to this. I swirl my straw in my fluorescent orange drink and avoid his gaze. "You could handle it, I couldn't."

"You could try."

"I _couldn't_. I couldn't handle it, Jackson, and I still can't handle it, and I really need you to stop expecting me to snap out of it and be able to handle it and be a better person. I'm not," I insist, even as his arm settles around my shoulders. I should shake him off, since the weight of that arm makes me feel small and silly and incapable and safe, but I don't. "I still dream about it," I whisper, and the music in Callie's isn't so loud that he can't hear me. "I still see Reed lying there, and Charles only a few feet away because he'd been running to help her when he was shot too. I still remember slipping in their blood, and their blood being all over me, and their blood turning the water in your shower pink. Do you remember that?"

"I remember."

He'd sat on the other side of the glass partition, when I was too broken to care about privacy or anything except not being left alone. In my heart, I know he wouldn't have looked even if the glass hadn't been frosted. Jackson has never looked at me that way, and he never will.

"I'm sorry." His voice is soft as his hand chafes my shoulder. "I want to stop mentioning it, and I want it to stop hurting you – but I also want you back, April. You should be with me, with us. You should be where you always wanted to be."

To an outsider, this might sound like a conversation between lovers. I know what he means, though: that I was meant to be a cop, and to uphold justice, and to save lives, and so was he. Because he got used to me, and to having me around while he upheld justice and saved lives, he misses me, even after all this time.

"You wanna go home?" I swipe my fingers under my eyes, but they're dry. It hurts me a little less every time I have to think about Reed and Charles, but I still don't like to think about them. "You wanna watch some really bad Westerns I TiVo-ed?"

"Yes."

We pull away from each other, and this time I punch him on the arm. "Such bad manners, Jack-man. Such a lack of respect." I lift my chin, eye him down the length of my nose. "It's very unbecoming in an Avery."

"You're unbecoming in an Avery," he snarks, since he can't think of anything better to say, and I laugh, and then we say goodbye to Callie and head out. There's a storm hovering almost directly over our heads, a mass of black clouds hanging over Seattle. It makes me shiver, so I give myself another one of those mental shakes; it's just a cloud, and it's always cloudy in Seattle, and if God was going to be that obvious about His intentions, He'd probably write messages in the sky for us to read every morning over breakfast.


	3. There's A Fine, Fine Line

**2. There's A Fine, Fine Line**

Jackson has a habit of buying groceries when I run out, which is annoying – well, actually it's not annoying, actually it's super helpful, but I should be able to remember to buy groceries even when I'm putting a case to bed, and his job is much more stressful than mine, so no matter how busy I am, he should not be buying me groceries (and also, when Jackson buys me food, Jackson eats my food). He's sitting across from me as I run over these points in my head, well into his second bowl of Cheerios, awake and alert and raring to go after his run while I'm hunched over my coffee, squinting at the clock.

"Where's open at this time?" I croak.

He gives me a you-may-be-the-stupidest-person-I've-ever-met look. "April, the convenience store on your corner is twenty four hours."

"I knew that," I say quickly. "I just didn't think they had Cheerios."

He gives me a you-may-be-the-worst-liar-I've-ever-met look. "Cheerios, milk, toilet paper, almond milk…everything you'd expect a convenience store to have." I'd snort at the almond milk, which he's been drinking as part of an attempt to bulk up (no, I didn't know almonds were magical muscle food either), but I'm kind of addicted to the chocolate flavoured kind which comes in cartons, so I usually keep a couple in the fridge to take to work with me. I never drink them in front of clients, obviously, since most people aren't convinced by the credentials of a P.I. who's slurping on the almond milk version of a juice box.

"Where did you sleep?"

"I didn't."

"Do you want to talk about it?" I know he didn't sleep. I got up to use the bathroom at three and he was sitting in the exact same spot on the couch where I left him, elbows on his knees, staring at the dark TV screen. Something's bothering him, but I can't tell whether it's work or personal. We've spent most of our adult lives together and I always know when something's up with him, but he can still somehow be inscrutable when he works hard at it.

Shaking his head, he shakes me off. "No. It's fine. Just Sloan stuff, nothing for you to worry about."

The relationship between Mark Sloan and Jackson Avery is undeniably weird. Jackson looks up to his captain almost as a father figure, which is odd considering Sloan is in his early forties at most and definitely does _not_ look his age. He's all brass and charm, and I suspect he does pull-ups when there's no one else in his office. The other weird thing is that both Jackson and Captain Sloan dated Lexie, and I've only ever heard parts of the story, but I think Sloan was into her before Jackson was, but he'd never properly spoken to her – even though he's Derek Shepherd's best friend and she's Meredith Grey's little sister – before the whole going blonde/playing darts/giving CPR deal happened, and then they got together, and then it was pretty clear that Sloan had been waiting a while for his shot, and I don't think Jackson really knows how to feel about that. I _know_ he doesn't know, even though I know nothing about the way that feeling must have burned, about how maybe it burns even now, and I also don't know how to feel about Mark Sloan, who once suggested I become Jackson's buddy.

His 'stress relief' buddy.

His…you get the picture buddy.

"Is he giving you a hard time? Is this about Lexie?"

"Just forget I said anything." He carries his bowl across to the sink, turning his back on me like he's scared of what I might see in his face. Why does he hide how much he cares about her from me? It's not like I'd judge him for it. Men say jump and I ask, 'how high?' from the get-go because I'm so happy to have someone interested in me, and I expect him to judge me, and he doesn't. That consideration works both ways, and Jackson is well aware of that fact, or he should be.

But he still hides from me.

So I don't push. I sip my coffee silently, and flick him with a dishtowel on his way out of the room. He grudgingly agrees to dry up at some undetermined later date, and then he pulls his hood up against the rain, and then I hear my front door close.

It's bubble bath time.

While taking baths is bad for the environment, and it's probably bad for both body and soul to sit in dirty water for so long, the tub is where I do my best detective work. I add a glug of damask rose oil, which is the one with the rich, spicy, sexy floral scent instead of the old lady scent, and then I lie back with a washcloth around my neck and breathe deeply and start the process by staring at the ceiling. I am going to attempt to think about Pastor Matthew's problem in the tub without thinking about Pastor Matthew _in the tub_. So, the lock box is emptied every time it reaches five hundred dollars…Pastor Matthew…suggesting a regular payment, rent, extortion, child support…Pastor Matthew…no one else has the combination…Pastor Matthew, Pastor Matthew, _hot_ Pastor Matthew.

It's too late. I'm thinking about Pastor Matthew _in the tub_, and I push the sweaty hair back off my forehead and imagine what Jesus would say to me right now.

There seems to be some sort of misconception about virgins, which is what I am: people assume that we're not interested in sex. I am very interested, which is unfortunate, and I have been since my hormones started raging at age fourteen, and I have been once a month, every month since, and some days between. I just feel, feel somewhere deep inside me, that God wants me to wait. I'm guessing He wants me to wait for marriage, which is what I want too, but what I also want is for it to be more than just an act of married love when it does eventually happen, more than just a way to cement us as a couple. I want it to be _everything_, everything books and movies and girls in my high school claimed it could be. I want it to be an act worth waiting for, a memory that lasts a lifetime. I want it to be something that makes me brand new, like a skin-on-skin baptism.

These are pretty deep, pretty inappropriate thoughts for a small time private investigator in her bathtub.

_**~#~**_

McDreamy was Derek Shepherd's nickname in college, and there's no denying it suits him. He's waiting for the elevator when I arrive, wearing a black suit and a blue tie, his blue eyes smiling at me before his mouth can catch up.

"Good morning, April."

"Good morning," I manage.

I think I feel my knees shaking.

This is probably his second trip of the day up to the offices of Grey, Shepherd and Yang, because his black hair is rumpled, which means he's been running his hands through it, which means he's been worried about a case and therefore awake since the crack of dawn, worrying about his case. I get it's pitiful that I can divine Derek Shepherd's mood from the state of his hair, but his hair is almost always perfect, so when it's not, it makes an impact.

"How are you doing today?"

I also get that he doesn't really want to know how I'm doing and that he's just being polite, but I was an ugly duckling for so many years that I may never be comfortable around handsome men who bother to make conversation with me, so I tell him. I tell him my suspicion that Jackson's still hung up on Lexie, and then I ask about her and Sloan, and then I ask about Meredith, and then I launch into how I didn't know the convenience store on my corner was twenty four hours and how dumb I feel, and then I finish by freaking out over the fact that I wore lipstick today. I wore it in case I had to go to St. Michael to see Pastor Matthew, but I'm convinced it's the wrong colour, and I'm burbling on about this when Derek Shepherd smiles and shakes his head at me.

"So you don't agree that it's the wrong…" I stop.

I have to.

Because he's extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully, but with just the right amount of pressure (the way a really good kiss should feel), wiped it across my lips.

"It's not the wrong colour," Derek Shepherd informs me. "It's just too bright."

"Uh," I say, as the chime sounds and the elevator doors slide open.

"Have a great day, April."

"Uh," I say again.

It takes me a good minute and a half to remember that I need to take the elevator too.

The serenity of that hour in the bath is quickly fading, probably because I'm now distracted by the robbery at St. Michael and that fact that Derek Shepherd just _touched_ me. I try to put my work face on, but it's hard when you can't even feel your feet touching the ground. When I get out on the fourth floor and go to put my little carton of almond milk in the fridge – the lunch thief isn't a fan of almond milk – I run into Meredith and instantly feel guilty. I really shouldn't, since, you know, her husband was the one who touched me, and it wasn't like it was a big deal to him, only to me, and even though guilt is my autopilot setting, it takes so long for me to process all these facts that I've stopped dead in front of Meredith and stared at her for so long that she gives in to the desire to wave her hand in front of my face.

"Hello? Earth to Kepner?"

I snap to attention. "Morning!"

She studies me slantwise with her catlike eyes. They're a very pale shade of green, lighter than Jackson's, which have some hazel in them. Her brows are arched, and the bones of her face are sharp and beautiful. A lot of the time, the way Meredith looks makes me feel too soft, too bland, and the way Meredith looks at me makes me feel like a fool. "Are you okay?" She inquires after a beat. I stopped so close to her that my outthrust box of milk is brushing the red fabric of her shirt, which is worn under a charcoal grey suit. I could never pull off such stern colours.

I wind back my arm. "I'm great! Just great. And how are you today, Grey?"

To me, last names mean familiarity, a step beyond the awkward use of first names by awkward new acquaintances (because I'm aware that her name is Grey, not Grey-Shepherd, not Shepherd, just Grey). To Meredith, I'm pretty sure last names mean she can keep me at arm's length. I imagine she'd have my back in a fight with someone who wasn't Cristina, and we've drunk together at Callie's enough times, but Meredith, in her well-cut suit, with her well-cut hair sweeping her shoulders, comes close to unconsciously being the mean girl of my still high school-esque existence. She doesn't mean to be mean, and she's smart and caring and funny, and she's a really good lawyer…and yet I snap to attention like a soldier and can't seem to relax my spine around her.

"I'm great," she says slowly. I notice a spot of white on her shoulder, and before I can help it, I've flicked it off. Meredith actually smiles.

"Bailey," she tells me. I only know what Jackson got from Lexie, but the sum of it is that Derek and Meredith were trying for a baby for a long time, and then she had a miscarriage, and then trying didn't work, so they adopted Zola, the cutest, smartest little girl in the world who I just want to eat up (unless Sophia's around, in which case she's _one_ of the cutest, smartest little girls in the world who I just want to eat up). After Zola, it just suddenly happened for them, which is apparently quite normal for couples who adopt. Derek Bailey Shepherd has a tiny, perfect nose and ten tiny, perfect fingers, and Derek is so high-flying that he rarely even has to take cases anymore, so he does the lion's share of feeding, changing and walks in the park. That's not to say that Meredith doesn't love her baby, she does: she does casework with a cup of coffee in one hand and Bailey in the other, and she's so used to holding him that she sometimes forgets he's even there.

Or so Derek Shepherd proudly reports.

Their love story is long and twisty, mostly because Meredith wanted to be the best lawyer she could and Derek was her boss and she wasn't into commitment and was kind of a wild child for a while, and also because he was separated and awaiting divorce when he met her. His ex-wife was a lawyer too, but now she lives in L.A., and Derek and Meredith have two children and she occasionally gets spit-up on her clothes.

I want spit-up on my clothes someday.

Eventually, I make it to my office, but before I can start the process of freaking out which will end with me believing I can literally _hear_ my biological clock ticking, the phone rings.

"Good morning, you're through to the office of April Kepner, licensed private investigator."

"Kepner."

And all thoughts of babies evaporate like mist off the Pacific. Only one person barks at me down the phone, and that's Miranda Bailey, and Miranda Bailey writes the 'Whodunnit and How They Did It' column in the Seattle Post, featuring the exploits of yours truly. The relationship works both ways, because Bailey is always first to get the scoop on where a really juicy crime has gone down, and then I break traffic laws trying to get there before the police, and then I try to crack it, and then she writes it up and publishes it.

Also, she barks at me down the phone.

"Hi!" I squeak. Bailey terrifies me. My top five fears are a life without love, spiders, sharks, snakes, Miranda Bailey.

"Homicide," she announces, sounding pleased with herself. "Looks open and shut, but if you get uptown fast enough, you can probably do your Nancy Drew thing before Pretty Boy and his merry men arrive." By Pretty Boy, she means Jackson. I don't think I need to tell you who his merry men are. Pictures of Jackson pull in the eighteen to twenty five female group according to Bailey, so he always hides from her at crime scenes – the Averys are a big deal in the police force, in case you hadn't already guessed. "It's a messy one," she warns.

"Address?"

I jot it down on the pad of paper beside the phone.

"Suspects?"

There's only one name to write.

"Traffic?"

Bad at this time of the morning, but I still make it there before the SPD do.

The ground floor apartment was nicely decorated at one point, and there's real wood panelling on the walls that used to be white. The entryway is splattered with red, and I had to walk past the body and the crowd of people standing guard over it on my way in. He made it out to the street, poor guy, but died of multiple stab wounds to the chest before anyone could dial nine-one-one. The attack was so frenzied that's there spatter all the way up to the ceiling.

Not to be disrespectful to the dead, but frenzied attacks are my favourite kind.

There's the knife, dramatically stuck between a gap in the floorboards, and I make sure to wrap my hand in a baggie from my jacket pocket before I pick it up. The blood makes nasty patterns on the pale blue plastic.

"April!"

I nearly drop it.

"Why are you always the one holding the bloody knife?!"

Damn the super-efficient, speed limit-pushing Seattle Police Department.

"It's not _always_ a bloody knife." I answer Jackson's question by passing him the murder weapon, palm-to-palm, just like we were taught. "Sometimes people use guns." He blocks off the doorway until the knife is safely in his hand, then steps aside to allow Stephanie Edwards to trail in behind him. We've been introduced about a dozen times, but every time she sees me, she looks at me like I'm a creature from Mars with a zit on my chin. Since my acne cleared up years ago (and I pay a lot of money to keep it cleared up) and I'm definitely not from Mars, I can only guess that being close with Jackson means she doesn't like me very much, or else that she wants to be me. This makes no sense, as my relationship with Jackson is anything but sexual, and Stephanie is way prettier than me.

She has perfect skin, for example.

Jackson's voice brings me out of my own head, as it usually does. "How did you find out about this?"

"Bailey."

His eyes narrow. "This is open and shut. There's no family to hire you."

"Oh."

"Which means she wants a favour."

He's right, of course. Bailey likes to lay a trail of breadcrumbs to get me interested in a case she's too abrasive or too recognisable or too 'goddamn busy' to investigate herself. She throws frenzied attacks and clear evidence of guilt into my lap and tricks me into getting a taste for the more hardcore aspect of my job again, and then after the breadcrumbs comes the gingerbread house: the unsolvable, the uncomfortable, the award-winning. I can't ever turn away. Missing dogs and cheating husbands pay my bills, but they totally fail to get my heart racing.

"Don't do it," Jackson advises me. "You've got this church thing, you'll get other clients soon."

"But what if someone needs my help?"

"Then they can come to you themselves." He takes hold of me, gripping the top of my arms, and Stephanie makes a sound like a scalded cat. Jackson doesn't seem to hear. "You practically worked yourself to death over those copycat sexual assaults, and there was no payoff for you at the end."

"Stark's in prison," I point out.

"Stark wanted conjugal visits with you in exchange for his confession."

I wince. He's squeezing my arms too hard, and my fingers are starting to tingle.

"Jackson, you're hurting me."

But it still takes him a second to pull back. For that one moment, he holds pressure, and I can't tell if he's looking at me, or looking through me, or whether he's seeing me at all. I can't tell what he's thinking. My eyes meet his eyes, then I glance away, then I glance back. His expression hasn't changed, and it refuses to change, even when his fingers uncurl. He lets me go. He steps back.

"I'm sorry."

"It's nothing." It's nothing but business as usual, me hurriedly brushing back the hair that's drifted over my cheek, him turning to Stephanie and instructing her what to do about the body outside, the way I might have with my rookie if I'd been the one who could deal with the death of our friends. "I guess I'd better go see what Bailey wants."

"I guess you had," says Jackson, like it's no big deal. Maybe it's not.

Maybe it is?

If he looked, and he did see me, then chances are he saw more than most people.

That scares me a little.

Because I'm an adult and, more importantly, because I'm an adult who used to be a police officer, I pull myself together on the ride over to the Seattle Post building. I blast country music, because really, whose thoughts can be deep and dark when there's country music playing and they've just been at the scene of a frenzied murder? I think of Reed, of her sweet, sexy, pixie-like face, of how much braver than me she was in just about every way – except when it came to horror movies. I'm a fan of the slasher variety, of blood and guts and gore. She wasn't the type to hide behind a cushion, so she genuinely used to go out to sports bars rather than stay in the house while I stuffed myself with popcorn and scared myself with silly with fake blood and guts and the psychology of it all.

I wonder, as I always wonder, if a tiny concession on my part might have changed the course of her life. If we'd eaten lunch together on a certain day, or if I hadn't watched Saw one night and she'd stayed in with me, would the day she died have gone any differently?

Whose thoughts can be deep and dark when there's country music playing and they've just been at the scene of a frenzied murder?

Mine, I guess.

Bailey is in the act of methodically eating an almond croissant when I knock on her door. She's torn it into sections, and every few seconds she peels back a layer of pastry, pops into her mouth, pauses, peels back a layer of marzipan, then eats that too. She takes a sip of coffee and gestures for me to sit opposite her, which I do. I already feel reprimanded, even though I haven't done anything wrong. I already feel anxious about what she's going to ask me to do. Sweat dews between my shoulder blades.

"Tell me," she begins, an order rather than a request. "About the cop killings."

"The what?"

"Don't play coy with me, Kepner. You and Pretty Boy are practically joined at the hip, I know you know what I'm talking about."

"I know I don't know what you're talking about," I insist. I honestly don't. "There haven't been any cop killings."

There's a moment where Bailey tries to figure out if I'm bluffing, then she slaps the latest copy of the Post down on her desk between us. "You should read the paper, Nancy Drew."

_Most Recent Cop Killing is 'Part of a Pattern', say Experts  
_

I don't want to read further. I can't. My fingertips skitter over the headline, the by-line, over the photo of a slightly paunchy older man who, thank the Lord, I've never seen before. His family will be in my prayers tonight nevertheless. I'll pray, and I'll probably cry, but I won't read any further. My hands skitter right off the page, right off the desk, drop into my lap and tremble.

"Nine millimetre," Bailey says, in a gentle tone that doesn't match the words 'nine millimetre'. "The recovered bullet had striations – striations the lab have seen before."

"No." I focus on my hands.

"They were matched to the bullets which killed Officers Charles Percy and Reed Adamson."

"_No_." My whole body is shaking now, rattling my bones. My lipstick must look even brighter, since my face feels so cold that it can only be corpse-coloured. "The person who killed Charles and Reed is was caught. I saw him convicted and sentenced." Because I'm an adult, an adult who used to have more than one good friend, I wrench my chin up and glare at her. "George O'Malley is in jail, and every day he makes me a bad Christian, because I won't forgive him."

"George O'Malley is appealing his conviction," she tells me. "George O'Malley is being represented by the firm of Grey, Shepherd and Yang."

I feel the anger and hate bubble up inside me, as dangerous and as seductive as boiling sugar. No, I couldn't deal with what happened, and this is one of the reasons why. I was angry, and I grieved, and I'm still angry, and I still grieve. I went through the five stages of grief, and I accepted that they're dead, and that God has welcomed them into His kingdom, where there are no bullets and no slasher movies either, but some days I deny, and some days I'm angry, and today has just become one of those days.

"You think I can find the real killer, if George O'Malley really didn't do it."

Bailey's eyes are large, brown and clear. "I think no one has a better motive for finding him than you."

"Where do I even start?"

"First off, I recommend you talk to the appellant." Even the idea has me pressing back into my chair, as if it's a hundred foot plunge I have to stay away from. "He always protested that he'd been trying to help them because he was a doctor, that that's the reason why their blood was all over him, that he only ran from the scene because he was afraid of being falsely accused. Sure, he got kicked out of Seattle Grace's surgical program, but that makes him incompetent, not evil."

"And then?"

"And then I suggest you and I review whatever evidence we can get our hands on." She leans back, challenging me to challenge her. She appears as cool as a cucumber, but her mouth is sour. "My ex-husband is a cop. My husband is in private security and wants to be a cop. I don't like people who kill cops."

"Neither," I manage. "Do I."

I call Jackson from the car, in full knowledge of the fact that his phone will be off until the end of his shift. "I guess it's not Lexie you were worried about," I say, hearing my own voice echoing back on the answerphone. I sound far off and cold. This isn't me. This isn't what I'm like.

Still, when he calls me back later that night, I turn up the volume on the TV and pretend not to notice. There are lines, I decide, drawn between people, and some of them are never meant to be crossed. He lied, and a lie of omission is still a lie. There are lines between us, and he crossed one, and he decided I was a person who couldn't handle the truth because I dropped out and bounced back and have never gotten over something which maybe I'm never supposed to get over. He decided I was fragile, and decided he was the strong, silent type of man who deals with business and who he has no business being, not with me.

There are lines drawn between people, and apparently there are lies too.

If he sees me, then I see him right back, and I guarantee I see more than most people.


	4. Smiling Faces Sometimes

**3. Smiling Faces Sometimes**

When I was nine, my sister Libby cut all the hair off my Barbie doll. I stood and watched her do it, too stunned to make a sound as the glossy gold and pink locks drifted to the floor. She did it because _her_ Barbie only had basic blonde hair, but _I'd_ only gotten a Barbie with two-tone hair because my dad did what any man would do when faced with buying Christmas gifts for his daughter: he grabbed the first doll off the first shelf in the first store he went into, charged his card, and congratulated himself on a job well done.

When I was ten, I cut off Libby's ponytail the night before the girls' choice at school. Her screams woke me the next morning, sweeter than even my sweet, smug dreams (I like to win). I hid the ponytail in her underwear drawer which, of course, provoked more screaming when she went to get a pair of panties. I never told her it was me, but I told our minister, who said I should apologise to Libby. I never did, and she never bought me a new Barbie doll – she did wear her hair in a bob until her mid-teens, though.

Conclusion: I like to win, and I'm good at holding grudges.

Jackson corners me in Callie's, which opens early on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and where I sometimes get to have a baby on my lapwhile I drink my coffee. He's holding a takeout cup from a well-known chain, which earns him a glare from Callie, who was already planning on glaring at him on my behalf. She scoops Sofia off my lap like she's protecting her daughter from being contamination and stalks away, muttering in Spanish.

Is it bad parenting to use the word _puta_ if your toddler can't talk yet?

"Can you just go away, please?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Planting his hands on my knees, Jackson turns me to face him. I allow it reluctantly, annoyed first because I don't like being manhandled, and second because I'm still smarting over his lack of faith in me. "You don't get to shut me out just because you're mad," he says. "You're allowed to be mad, but you have to talk to me about it. Those are the rules."

"The rules according to whom?"

"Uh, according to everyone?"

"He's right," Arizona chimes in, slipping past us on her way out to work. I roll my eyes, but she's too quick for me. I end up looking like I'm exasperated with the door as it swings closed behind her.

"I'm so mad, Jackson."

"I know."

"_So_ mad."

"I know." He presses down lightly on my thighs, keeping me right where he wants me, sitting on this barstool, incapable of escape.

I don't like confrontation.

I didn't think he did either.

"I don't know how you could do that," I accuse his collar, refusing to look him in the eye. "I don't know how you could hide that from me." Because he's a guy before he's a police officer, he's left his top button undone, which will piss off Sloan before the day's even begun. Feeling like his mother – who would never be caught dead fussing like this – I reach up and slip it through the buttonhole, my fingernails scraping the freshly shaved and slightly tender skin of his throat. If he spoke, I would feel the vibration. Even the idea of that makes me uncomfortable, so I pull back, gently push away the hands pushing on me. "You thought I'd freak out, and you're right, I'm freaking out, because my best friend is a cop, and a cop has been _murdered_, so yes, I'm freaking out, but over you, not over them." But I'm still not quite easy, and touching his skin is too much. I fold my arms across my chest. "You don't have to take care of me, Jackson. You need to take care of yourself."

"April…" Jackson rubs the back of his neck. He's taken a step back, so I can pick up my coffee and act normal again. "I'll be fine. You know I'll be fine."

"I don't know that. You don't know that."

I can count my close friends on one hand, and no, it's not just Jackson, I'm fully committed to freaking out about them all. Callie owns a bar, what if someone tries to rob it? What it the robber has a gun? What if a couple of guys get too rowdy, and when Callie the Bone Breaker wades in, she gets hurt, thrown to the floor, slashed with broken glass? Arizona is a doctor, and I'll tell you for free that doctors are as much in the firing line as any police officer or soldier. Her good heart means she takes in anyone, even kids from poorer areas who never got their shots and now present with the prodrome stage of tuberculosis, measles, whooping cough. If she so much as inhales at the wrong time, she could get infected.

If she gets treated too late, she could die.

In my darker moments, I've imagined the deaths of every single one of my friends. It's not wishful thinking, but it's a pattern I can't break out of. I can't save them either. The best I can do is pester Arizona about her own shots and dig my nails into my palms when Callie cracks her knuckles at any rival football fans who dare to butt heads in her bar.

"No, I don't know that," he concedes. If he noticed me going somewhere else in my head, he doesn't mention it. Jackson is well aware of how much time I waste worrying over things I can't do anything about, how I see eight sides of everything. "But you have to trust me, April. I'm good at the job, and I'm good at being careful. If I were any better, I'd be as paranoid as you are." He picks up his takeout coffee cup, and we swig in synchronisation. "What have you got going on today?"

I blink, caught out by how quickly he's swept my concerns under the rug, not to mention the grudge I was meant to be holding. "Matthew's taking a class most of the teenagers under suspicion attend. He wants me to come along, do some digging."

"Matthew?"

"Just Matthew."

"And are Matthew and you planning on doing anything after class?"

"Are you suggesting we should be doing something?"

Is he suggesting Matthew should have asked me out by now?

Can he tell that I wish he would?

"You like him. He likes you. I don't see the problem." Jackson drains the last of his coffee, then flips the cup back over his shoulder and into the trashcan. It's a show-off move and there's no one here to see it, so I arch an eyebrow at him.

"I don't know if he likes me. He probably doesn't."

"Do you want to find out?"

"No."

"April…"

"_No_."

"Faint heart never won fair lady."

"Matthew is neither fair nor a lady."

"Fine, then being chicken never got anyone anywhere."

Me, chicken? Me, a private investigator, chicken? My mouth drops open. "I am _not_ chicken!"

Jackson grins. "Prove it."

"How?"

"Let me drive you, and we'll see what happens."

I'm wary of a prank, not that it matters now that I've pretty much caved anyway. If I back down now, clucking sounds will echo through my apartment morning, noon and night. "Just drive me? Not drive me, then lock yourself in Matthew's office and interrogate him? Not make him fill out a survey that says 'check this box if you'd be interested in a relationship with April Kepner', or 'on a scale of one to ten, what level of attractiveness would you rate April Kepner'?"

He raises his right hand like he's swearing an oath. "Just drive you. Karev and I are partnered for hand-to-hand from eleven, so I don't have time to lock anyone anywhere."

"Lunch?" I offer. It's Saturday, his half-day. He'll go in this evening to work on Sloan's super-secret chief projects, then come by later to complain about my poor choice of cable channels.

"If Alex is invited."

"Alex means Jo."

"Then it's a party."

Alex Karev and I are…complicated. There was one almost night at Jackson's after a party, and Alex was an ass about the almost part (he was paid back for that with a punch to the face, and no, I'm not going to say by whom). He's really shaped up recently, even going so far as to apologise to me of his own free will. I suspect there may even be a heart of gold buried deep beneath those impressive pecs.

Still, Alex and I are complicated.

I sigh before I can stop myself. "Fine. Pick me up at one."

"But what if something happens with His Holiness?"

"He's a pastor, not the Pope. _One_, Jackman."

Since we're now back to nicknames, I must've forgiven him. How did that happen?

Matthew is now Matthew because we've been talking on the phone a lot over the past week, so much that I've given up on using his title, even in my head. There's something about his voice that makes me feel warm and gooey, like melted chocolate, and there's something about the way he speaks about the love of God which whispers to me on a deeper level. He's waiting on the steps as we pull up outside St. Michael, and my heart squeezes gently when he smiles. Jackson switches off the wipers, then the engine, then squints through the windshield.

"That him?"

"That's him."

"April, I…"

April, he…what? I turn my head, my brows drawing together, and Jackson does something strange. Still sort of immobilised by his seatbelt, he leans towards me. The scent of his skin and his clothes is clean, cotton fresh, just a little bit musky. I freeze like a rabbit when he lays his lips on my cheek. I can't remember Jackson ever kissing me before, even there, and it's stranger than strange. I _feel_ him, all of him, the slight roughness of his jaw against mine, the surprising softness of his mouth, the way his shoulder bumps against mine. I already had that whole epiphany about the lines which exist between people, but this one is okay to be crossed, right? So long as it doesn't mean anything? I do get that it doesn't mean anything, because I get what he's doing. I see it in his amused green eyes as he pulls away.

"Good luck."

I skipped breakfast, and the consequence is a mild dizziness that's only just starting to bother me now. I climb shakily out of the car, gripping the door frame like an old lady, then embarrass myself even further by rushing up the steps to get to Matthew, as well as to get under the protection of the church's portico.

Matthew's expression has slipped. "Was that your boyfriend?"

"Best friend," I correct him. "That was Jackson."

His attention is fixed on the four-by-four as it drives away. He's not even facing me when he asks, "April, would you like to have dinner with me?"

My heart squeezes again, harder. "What?"

Manners are very important to Matthew, I could tell that from the moment I met him. He pulls himself together and turns to me, that much taller than me, that much more intense than I am, suddenly seeming set on the idea. I'm not complaining. "You're beautiful," he says, his voice low, his gaze brown and warm and so open, so very honest that can I believe he believes I'm beautiful. "And you're brave – I've been reading Miranda Bailey's columns about you, so don't deny it. You may be the bravest, most beautiful woman I've ever met." He takes a deep breath, gives himself a little shake. He looks intent. He looks intoxicated.

I am intoxicating to him.

_I _am intoxicating to_ him_.

"Would you like to have dinner with me, April?"

"Yes," I reply, and then I stretch up on my toes to kiss his cheek, the way Jackson kissed mine. He may be the sweetest, most honourable man I've ever met. I may even make his heart squeeze, the way he does mine. "I'd love to have dinner with you, Matthew."

I guess he does like me.

_**~#~**_

I was never that girl who got picked at the dance. I was never that girl ho got picked at _anything_, but Matthew picked me. I let myself enjoy that fact, and then I let myself skip the couple of blocks to the grill where we're having lunch and dance through the doors. The hostess snaps gum and tells me my party has already arrived. The blend right in, Jackson and Alex in sweatpants and sweat-marked t-shirts, Jo Wilson in the women's version of that unappealing outfit. Her shirt has a deep V-neck, and Alex's eyes keep drifting.

He probably wouldn't see a bus heading for his face, let alone Jackson's first.

"Hey!" I plop down onto the banquette and reach for the menu. "Isn't it a beautiful day? Did the waitress bring the specials board by yet? What looks good?"

Jo doesn't do peppy. She rolls up a loaded potato skin, shoves it into her mouth, and stares at me.

"Crap," says Alex. "Kepner's in a good mood."

"Funny," I reply. "That Karev never is."

Jackson doesn't join in the banter. I'm almost a little bit annoyed about what he pulled in the car this morning, regardless of the result, so I decide not to speak to him until he speaks to me.

We order. Maybe it's because they're both tired, dressed alike and red-blooded males, but Jackson and Alex order the same steak cut with the same traditional sauce and fries. Jo orders ribs, then acts like the waitress, whose name tag reads 'Becky', is as dumb as a stump when she asks if that's a half or a full rack. Since I didn't get breakfast, I allow myself a burger, and then I allow myself bacon and cheese, and then I add a side of sweet potato fries because they're better for you than ordinary fries, and every little helps when you're about to eat a burger whose two ingredients are dead cow and unrefined grease.

We eat. Alex is only a bite or two into his steak when he puts down his knife and bares his teeth at me. I twitch. I will not be cowed by Alex Karev, even if Alex Karev is gearing up to make fun of me, the topic of interest being my love life (because I guess I have a love life now, and I've just made it blatantly obvious by bouncing and beaming like a junior cheerleader, still young enough not to be slutty).

"So, Apes."

"Alex."

"Who'd you give your flower to?"

You know that thing that happens in movies but never in real life, where people spit their drinks because the most awkward and heinous question in the world has just been asked? It turns out that really does happen. Jo sucks in a bone and gags, and Jackson sprays his plate with beer. I blush amber, red, halfway to a new career as a traffic light. I feel my bright, shiny joy begin to curl up at the edges.

"Shut up," I manage.

"That has to be what put a smile on your face, right?"

"Wrong."

"Now, does that mean you didn't do it or that it wasn't that good?"

I stuff in a fry, give myself a moment. "You tell me, Alex. You're a big tough cop with dozens of busts and, you claim, dozens of conquests under your belt. Does the fact that you haven't gone for the one girl you actually care about mean you're a chickenshit, or that you were lying about those dozens of girls who came before her and you're going to die alone, wandering the streets with some ancient form of syphilis?" Not all of that made sense, and I'm longing to hold my cold beer bottle against my hot face, but Alex is choking on his own beer, so I've definitely done something right.

When he can breathe again, he leans back against the sticky red leather. "So what put a smile on your face, Kepner?"

"I have a date."

"You're cute," Jo says out of the blue. "You must go on lots of dates."

"Thank you for the compliment, but no. No, I do not."

I actually haven't been on a date in six months, which leads me to the inevitable post-glow panicking stage. What if I've forgotten what to do, how to sit, what to order so I don't seem greedy or like I'm starving myself? What if I cross my legs at the table? My mother would never forgive me if I crossed my legs at the table. It's important for a woman to have her feet firmly on the ground, that's what she always told my sisters and I. My blood pressure climbs (I can always feel it rising, like steam in a sauna), my right leg to jiggle uncontrollably. I thank God that no one above table level can see it, or read my mind, for that matter.

Jo Wilson is my polar opposite. She's methodically working her way through her rack of ribs, not knowing or more likely not caring about the sauce on her chin, or about the happy noises she makes as she chows down. "Alex." She eats another rib for the road. "Who's 'the one girl you actually care about'?"

None of us are that hungry, but we all grab for the dessert menu at the same time. In the ensuing tussle, Alex cedes to Jackson and Jackson cedes to me, and I order a banana split from Becky the waitress before Jo's even finished her plate. She's been sufficiently distracted and seems happy to continue. How can she be so oblivious, I wonder, when looks at her the way she's looking at those ribs?

"So." Alex clears his throat and focuses on me again, since I've just given him just cause for a vendetta.

Oops.

"Who's the guy?"

"His name is Matthew, and he's a minister, and he's tall, and he has really big hands and really nice manners, and he's kind of like you, Alex, only a not a jerk jock whose nearest relation is a gorilla."

"Ouch. Seriously, though, are you gonna do it with this guy?"

"No!"

"Come, on Apes!"

"Why do you care so much?"

He shrugs. "Beats the hell out of me. I just figure you're wasting the best years of your life, waiting for some fairytale prince who's never going to come along. Guys are just guys. Some are stupid and some are smart, and some will be sweet to you and some won't, but most of them want to sleep with you, and a guy who's willing to wait for you to marry him before taking you out for a test drive is a guy who's either gay, or doesn't want you enough."

"Because a guy who wants me enough would what – tear my clothes off the first chance he got?"

"Not the first chance." Alex gestures with his fork like he's conducting an imaginary choir. "But even you know that it can be a slow burn kind of thing. It builds, this thing you have going on between you, all the way to the point where he looks at you and you look at him, and there's no way it isn't going to happen." I hope no one else notices the way he glances towards Jo, the way he keeps glancing towards Jo. There's no way she'll stay oblivious forever, not unless he learns to be more subtle. Right now, he may as well go the whole hog and tattoo the way he feels about her on his forehead. "And if it doesn't build, and if you don't keep feeling like parts of you are going to start falling off if you don't jump each other, then it's not real."

I lean back to make space as my split is deposited in front of me. "Alex Karev is a closet romantic."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Shut up, Virgin Mary. It's about sex, not romance, and you'll get that after you cave and bang His Holiness."

"Why does everyone keep calling him that? He's just a guy, not the Pope!"

"Dude, he has to have a flock or whatever to even have a chance of getting into your pants!"

And this is why I should never get into fights I can't win. Instead of wasting my breath, I nudge my plate towards Jackson and break my promise not to speak to him first. "Wanna split my split?"

"By that, do you mean 'please eat practically all of my split, because I'm only going to get a few spoonfuls in before I remember I don't like bananas'?" He was watching me for a while before I turned to him, and now he's pretending he wasn't. What is wrong with everyone today? I've been kissed, asked out – and not by the same man who kissed me – cross-questioned, complimented and now studied like a specimen in a lab by my best friend, who thinks I'm unaware that he was studying me like a specimen in a lab. Is there a neon sign above my head flashing 'open for business'? 'Person of interest'? Wasn't I interesting before?

No, probably not.

"You should have all of it."

"What? Why?"

"I've lost my appetite."

That doesn't do anything to reduce the level of staring, of course, not from any of them.

It's easy enough to see that I don't like feeling fragile, and what I like even less is being considered fragile, and watched over, and patronised. I'm not weak. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not weak.

It gets too much. I struggle out of the booth and take refuge in the ladies' room (the sign on the door reads 'broads'), pressed up close to my own reflection, the kind of close you only ever get when you're trying to see inside yourself, when questions like why you are who you are suddenly occur to you, when your face starts to look like the face of a stranger.

She gives a minute or so, then follows me in and puts her back against the door.

"Alex doesn't mean to be a douche."

"I know that."

"And it's nice to hear you've found a guy. Good for you."

"Thanks."

Jo comes further into the room, making the space more intimate, but not in an intrusive way. I really doubt she cares about my deepest, darkest desires, which is kind of refreshing. My secrets have no effect on her life, so she's decided she doesn't need to hear them. She's a real rough diamond.

"But I thought someone should tell you that it's obvious this isn't about Alex."

An omniscient rough diamond, apparently.

"Then what _is_ it obviously about?"

"Don't act like…oh." She rocks back on her heels, folds her arms. "You genuinely don't get it, do you? I guess it's not my place to tell you, in that case."

"To tell me what? What, Jo?!"

"God!" Jo sighs, rolls her eyes to Heaven, pushes her (gorgeous) hair back off her (gorgeous) face. "Okay, I'm going to Simple English Dictionary it for you, because it's going to drive me crazy otherwise: Alex is not the problem."

"Uh-huh."

"So you have to work out who is the problem."

"Right."

"Once you work that out, you'll have your answer – maybe all the answers."

"Great." And if I sound irritated, it's because I am. "Thanks for the advice."

"I'd say you were welcome if you genuinely meant that."

I don't, and I don't want to listen to her anymore. "Have we got the check yet?"

"It's taken care of. I told them you were capable of making it home on your own, though"

"Do you have a ride?"

"Yeah, I do."

He's waiting for her.

He's willing to wait for her.

"I'm okay, Wilson. You can go."

She does, but she still looks at me like I might be crazy and she might be sorry for me on her way out. When I'm alone, I box up my bad temper and remember that I have a date tomorrow night, and that I'm healthy, and that I just ate a damn good burger, and that I shouldn't be so ungrateful to Jackson, who helped me get that date, and that Alex is always an ass and, most importantly, that I have work to do.

_**~#~**_

"Grey, Shepherd and Yang, attorneys at law, how may I direct your call?"

"Rose, it's April."

"April, how are you?"

"I'm actually kind of on a mission right now. Is Meredith in her office?"

"She is, would you like me to put you through?"

"Don't worry, I'm on my way over."

Rose is a glossy-haired brunette who's probably elegant even in her sleep. Her deep blue suit has a shawl collar, and her legs are neatly crossed at the ankle as I approach her desk. "Go straight through," she instructs me. "She's expecting you."

She is. She's leaning back with her eyes closed, and then she's leaning forward over her desk, and her expression is anything but friendly.

"I know why you're here."

"How could you?" I demand, fuelled by red meat and one bad temper in a carryout container.

"How could I represent a man my firm believes to be innocent? I wonder, Kepner."

"He's a convicted murderer!"

"The Innocence Project was built on convicted murderers." Meredith inspects her nails. "The case against George O'Malley was shaky and barely legal, which you would've known if you'd been called on to testify, but you weren't. You weren't the plaintiff in this case, you're not even a family member. I don't have to justify myself to you, April." Her words sting, but there's something going on an inch or so beneath them that makes me prick up my ears. She's giving me too much information, much more than she thinks I deserve. "Especially since you got everything you have from Bailey, who presumably twisted your arm until you agreed to go back over the original case, which is exactly what I'm doing, so you need George, and you need me. You have nothing to be righteous about."

"I…" George? Since when has he been 'George' to her? "Are you going to help me get access to O'Malley?"

Meredith smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "As it happens, I was getting ready to stop by your office when you stormed into mine." By 'stop by', she means 'descend on'. "Cristina and I believe that a re-examination of the evidence by an outside investigator will strengthen George's appeal."

"So?"

"So you want access to George? It's your lucky day, April: he wants access to you too."

"Wh…what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that George O'Malley has invited you to be his guest at King County Jail. He wants to hire you, April." She sits back in her chair, raises her chin. "Isn't that nice?"

I swallow.

I swallow hard.


End file.
